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> I think intelligence has for some time already been boiled down to curve fitting, even for humans. No, the book actually makes an important point about this.

> I think intelligence has for some time already been boiled down to curve fitting, even for humans. No, the book actually makes an important point about this. For instance, let's take a counterfactual. How do you know what would have happened if Barcelona had played Lionel Messi in goal over the latest season? They've never done this, there are no data points for you to fit. The situation almost never arises that an outfield player plays in goal, and when they do it is always in a situation where someone's been sent off or injured, which is also rare. And yet you and I and everyone else who can think knows this would result in Barcelona having a much worse season. Just to be clear, it's not only because you'd be taking a top player out of offense where he is worth a lot, which you can surely fit some curves to show. We can all guess that he'll be a worse keeper than Ter Stegen, but what curve would you fit that shows this? There's no data about Messi in goal. Pearl does give a way to work it out via counterfactual analysis though.

Invictus0 7y ago
If we say that goalkeeping requires certain skills, and being an outfielder also requires certain skills, these skills being graphed on a chart, its simple to see that Messi would not perform well as a goalkeeper, and this is still curvefitting. If it turns out that the goalkeeper and outfielder have a lot of overlapping skills, we might fall back and refer to a probability curve of things that normally happen; "players require practice to excel in their position" would seem to fall on that curve. The fact is that everything in the world can be reduced down to curves. It's just a matter of your perspective.
- lordnacho 7y ago
  > If we say that goalkeeping requires certain skills... If it turns out that the goalkeeper and outfielder have a lot of overlapping skills... That's kinda the problem here. Once you have a model fitting curves is fine. But you need a structure from somewhere. > players require practice to excel in their position The problem with this is there's no data. Nobody gets to play a position they haven't practiced for. Yet you still somehow came to the right conclusion. Anyway Pearl is much better at explaining this than I am.

Invictus0 7y ago

If we say that goalkeeping requires certain skills, and being an outfielder also requires certain skills, these skills being graphed on a chart, its simple to see that Messi would not perform well as a goalkeeper, and this is still curvefitting. If it turns out that the goalkeeper and outfielder have a lot of overlapping skills, we might fall back and refer to a probability curve of things that normally happen; "players require practice to excel in their position" would seem to fall on that curve. The fact is that everything in the world can be reduced down to curves. It's just a matter of your perspective.

lordnacho 7y ago
> If we say that goalkeeping requires certain skills... If it turns out that the goalkeeper and outfielder have a lot of overlapping skills... That's kinda the problem here. Once you have a model fitting curves is fine. But you need a structure from somewhere. > players require practice to excel in their position The problem with this is there's no data. Nobody gets to play a position they haven't practiced for. Yet you still somehow came to the right conclusion. Anyway Pearl is much better at explaining this than I am.